"what's crap, literally and figuratively, is spending thousands on a navy toilet seat."
Finally we agree. It pisses me off too! But Dems and Reps are both to blame.
Clip:
"Republicans abandon their strictures against government spending, and most Democrats join them in rubber-stamping military requests for supplementary funding.
LaborTalk for October 22, 2001:
The Untouchable Pentagon
By Harry Kelber
The Department of Defense, a.k.a. the Pentagon, is a bureaucratic behemoth that affects every aspect of our lives, yet operates in nearly total secrecy and is largely shielded from public scrutiny.
Members of Congress insist there is not enough money available for education, health and repairs to our crumbling infrastructure, but they can’t wait to unlock the treasury to grant the Pentagon’s current budget request for $334 billion. Republicans abandon their strictures against government spending, and most Democrats join them in rubber-stamping military requests for supplementary funding.
The Pentagon has dozens of weapons projects in the pipeline that will cost taxpayers countless billions for years to come. Any legislator who dares to criticize the military runs the risk of being denounced as unpatriotic and “soft on defense.”
Unions, too, have been reluctant to criticize the Pentagon because it provides thousands of jobs for their members. The more money for defense, the more jobs for workers. In the 1970s, the International Assn. of Machinists published a lengthy study to show that the money used for producing military aircraft, tanks and artillery could provide more jobs if spent on low-cost housing, urban renewal and a host of socially useful projects. The study received little support within the labor movement.
Years ago, when it was revealed that the Pentagon was spending $640 for a toilet seat or $659 for an ashtray, columnists and comedians smirked and called it outrageous — but now, we taxpayers shell out millions because of cost overruns and aborted projects, and hardly anyone notices. The cozy, interlocking relationship between the military and the arms manufacturers inevitably affects the price of the weapons and the handling of delays and poor performance.
The Pentagon exercises unquestioned authority over the nearly 1.5 million men and women in the armed services and 735,000 civilians whom it employs directly. Every year, from 1952 to 1994, the new money available to the Pentagon for its operations has exceeded the combined profits of all U.S. corporations, according to government data.
The defense establishment has little regard for unions, and usually takes the side of its contractors in labor-management disputes. For example, Avondale, a New Orleans shipyard company that received 80% of its funds from the U.S. Navy, was permitted to use federal money to finance its six-year fight against the metal trades unions.
The General Accounting Office has long regarded the Pentagon bookkeeping system as a mess, citing its failure to account for as much as $43 billion in one year. Huge unverified expenditures keep turning up in the ledger books of all the military branches.
While the war against terrorism rages, the Pentagon continues selling or giving away military hardware to 137 countries, without imposing any restrictions on what can be resold and to whom, or how it will be used. The U.S. is the world’s largest arms dealer, with sales of $18.6 billion in 2000, equal to half of the $36.9 billion for the total world market. Its closest competitor, Russia, totes up sales of $7.7 billion.
What is especially deplorable is that 68% of American arms sales are made to developing nations, according to Richard F. Grimmett, author of “Conventional Arms Transactions to Developing Nations.” The value of sales agreements with these countries was $25.4 billion in 2000, the highest in constant dollars since 1994, Grimmett reports. The Pentagon’s staff at the Foreign Military Sales Organization act as salespeople for the arms manufacturers and dealers, negotiating agreements and teaching the local military how to use the weaponry.
Expensive weapons systems are often sold to developing nations on credit, adding extra burdens to impoverished populations and saddling weak economies with heavy debt payments. And no one can stop these weapons from falling into the hands of rebels in civil wars or being used to quell popular unrest.
In the 1980s, the U.S. trained and equipped the Taliban “freedom” fighters and provided funds to Osama bin Laden in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Frankenstein monster we helped to create is now a threat to our own troops.
While we have been pressing for peaceful solutions in the Mideast, we have been selling jet fighters, bombers and other military hardware to all comers in the region. How does the Pentagon justify $8 billions in sales of fighter planes and missiles to the United Arab Emirates in 1998? Or more than $1 billion in sales to the Saudis and more than $5 billion to Israel, also in 1998?
What could be more unsavory and unjustifiable when we are waging war on terrorists than the training of legions of potential terrorists at the Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.? Since 1946, this “school” has trained more than 55,000 soldiers from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries in “counter-insurgency” skills. When their training is completed, they become shock troops for repressive governments that use them to terrorize peasants seeking land reform, Catholic priests and human rights protesters, students demanding academic freedom and union organizers fighting brutal sweatshop conditions.
Graduates of the Fort Benning “campus” have been involved in horrifying atrocities, such as the 1980 rape and murder of four nuns in El Salvador, in which three of the five officers found guilty were former SOA trainees. On the walls of the school are framed photos of former dictators and strongmen from Bolivia, Honduras, Ecuador, Argentina and other countries who trained at the school. The rogues’ gallery includes Manuel Noriega, former president of Panama and convicted drug trafficker, now doing time in a U.S. jail.
For at least ten years, protesters have been demanding the closing of the “School for Assassins,” but Congress has balked. As usual, the Pentagon gets the last word.
Here at home, there is a bitter, unresolved debate over gun control that flares up when a Columbine High School-type tragedy occurs. But not much is ever said about the millions of innocent people around the world who are killed by weapons supplied by our Pentagon-supported arms manufacturers and dealers. How long will the Pentagon remain untouchable?
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